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Friday, July 27, 2018

Fred Owens' Facebook: Follow-Up To Yesterday's Discussion Of Americans' Ignorance Of History

Following up on yesterday's observation that Americans are ignorant of history -- http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/07/fred_25.html -- I marvel at the widespread presumption that Trump will "Make America Great Again" because he is a "disruptor."Disruption, when championed by the dimwitted and/or ill-informed, is an open invitation to chaos.Predictably, anarchy is lose in America.Trump frays the nation's moribund Social Contract. And while the "ungodly rich" sequester ever more wealth, "The General Welfare" has become a quaint anachronism. Not one in ten Americans is aware that the phrase appears twice in the United States Constitution, including The Preamble where it is located in the same sentence that begins with the words, "We, the people." Everybody knows those three words - "We, the people." But how many former citizens (recently re-made as "consumer units") are aware that most Americans' wages declined over the last year? http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/most-americans-wages-have-declined-over-the-past-year.html

While Trump Trumpets Today's Economic News, The Current Business Cycle Is Old And Decrepit

As a nation, we applaud the progress of plutocrats while ignoring the common man's growing debt load and declining wages -- another benighted measure of Trumpistas' unfamiliarity with history and meaningful contextualization of current events. For most Americans, the bottom line is that "the 1% is smart enough to know they're stupid enough to applaud their own oppression."Yes, Trump and his fellow "one percenters" are prospering. But their stratospheric prosperity depends on grabbing "the slice of pie" that should go to you. (You don't notice because you're busy bending over and passing the K-Y.)

"The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"

What "The Official Story" will NOT mention is that you took it in the ___.It is an inconvenient truth that besotting consumerism has replaced responsible citizenship. And the very people most degraded by this transformation are convinced their fulminating degeneracy is reason to cheer The Solipsist. Ever since Ronald Reagan's "Me Generation" turned its back on "The Common Good," I have not met a conservative who strikes me as a happy, generous, fundamentally compassionate person: they're too busy erecting altars in praise of armed-to-the-teeth bigots and stand-your-ground, rugged invidualists... "New Age" companion pieces to the age-old altar of "The Golden Calf." Most "conservatives" impress me as aggrieved vandals who -- crippled by longstanding fears that have always prevented their enjoyment of open, caring, democratic society -- take perverse pleasure in the explosions they detonate under American institutions. Pruitt. DeVos. Ben Carter. Rick Perry. Michael Flynn. Steve Bannon ("Chief White House Strategist"). The Mooch.The Spiceman.The Huckster.Omarosa.Mike Pence.Mitch McConnell.Invertebrate Paul Ryan.And Ryan Zinke -- the blood red "cherry" atop the nation's blackening banana -- a guy whose spokeswoman actually argued that Muslims can't be president. https://www.cair.com/cair_calls_on_interior_secretary_zinke_to_drop_spokeswoman_who_claimed_a_muslim_can_t_be_presidentBlessedly, Zinke's daughter, a Navy veteran, offers this corrective view of Trumpolini: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/09/secretary-of-interior-ryan-zinkes-navy.htmlIn the end we are energy-seeking creatures. And there are two ways to access energy: fission and fusion.Facing this choice, American conservatives surrender themselves to fission, filling their energy needs by breaking things apart, never bringing them together. (In a rocket burst of projected irony, they claim Obama was divisive...)All of this is prelude to mentioning my high regard for "The Borowitz Report." And yesterday's installment is an exemplar of Andy Borowitz' customary satire and bone-dry wit as he illuminates the real crises we confront...